Dreamland
by akg.writes
Summary: It's Dreamland I and II the way Carter and Co. would never have allowed it....
1. Chapter 1

"Well, maybe if you wore taller heels you might be a little more useful around here."

Scully bristled and narrowed her eyes almost imperceptibly in her partner's general direction as he fumbled with heaps of files. "Perhaps, Spooky," she said icily, "if you bothered separating the goat-sucking, fat-slurping, pituitary/liver/tumor-eating, inbreeding, cow-exsanguinating, organ-harvesting, genderbending, hokey-pokeying, cerulean blue necrophiliac files" - her voice was steadily rising in intensity as the temperature in the room dropped degree by degree and Mulder turned his back to the overflowing cabinet that had been the focus of his attention a few seconds earlier to stare at Scully in something akin to shock - "from the smallpox- carrying, embryo-stealing, cigarette-smoking, pesticide-spraying, bounty-hunting, cockroach-crunching conspiracy files in the first place..." She paused to breathe and watched as a small mountain of files began their descent from the top of the cabinet and her partner tried - unsuccessfully and with considerably less grace than usual - to catch them. She smirked.

Mulder dropped the few papers he had actually caught and watched the rest flutter to the ground at his partner's feet. "Well, Your Royal Frostiness," he said, dusting his hands off on his slacks, "since you're so much closer to the ground, why don't you pick those up for me?"

Scully glared at him, silently fuming.

He smiled at her.

She hated those damn dimples.

Just like she hated arriving at work punctually only to find her desk covered with unfinished reports - Mulder's unfinished reports, incidentally - and her partner's assertions that while he organized the files, she would finish his reports.

"It's all very logical, Agent Scully," he'd told her. "You write better reports. I'm tall enough to reach all the files."

Had he always been that cocky?

He had then dumped a pile of expense reports onto her desk, followed in quick succession by his instructions, his ideas, and the way he wanted the stupid things done.

She honestly couldn't remember a time that his quirks had annoyed her so much.

So, of course, it was natural that she had cracked when the first soggy sunflower seed shell had lodged itself in her hair.

"Dammit, Mulder," she'd snapped, whirling around and hurling the offensive shell at her insensitive - and clueless - partner. "What the hell am I, your concierge? Why do I have to write your reports?"

That was when he'd made the crack about her height.

She pursed her lips and glared at Mulder's back. He had summarily dismissed her from his thoughts as he went back to the filing cabinet, no doubt expecting her to pick up all the files he had dropped as any good little partner would.

"I am not picking up those files, Mulder," she informed him quietly.

He was flipping through a file that had caught his attention. "Fine, don't," he told her with a shrug, not taking his eyes from the file in his hands. "But disorganization doesn't bother me nearly as much as it utterly incenses you, my dear anal-retentive skeptic."

She opened her mouth with a ready retort, then snapped it shut. He was completely right. He knew that it was only a matter of time before she would be compelled to pick up the papers littering the floor. She hated it when he was right.

Bastard.

"Given the ass you're making yourself out to be, Mulder, I would have to say you're just a bit more anal than I am."

Had she said that out loud? She was about to gasp a hasty apology when Mulder next spoke.

"It has been twenty-nine days since our last spat, Scully. You're a day overdue."

It took her a moment to realize what he was saying. She gasped in barely-contained outrage. "Excuse me?"

He shrugged once again, still seemingly engrossed in the file. "If you would like to go home, take a nice bubble bath, put a heating pad on your back, and pop some Midol, don't let me stop you, Scully."

Bastard. Bastardbastardbastardbastardbastard.

And how the hell did he know her monthly rituals anyway? At least he didn't mention the┘.

"SaveMart is having a sale on Ben and Jerry's, you know. Two-for-one Chunky Monkey, Scully."

That was it. "It's so nice to know that a BS in physics, a medical degree, and special agent status in the Federal Bureau of Investigations gains me such respect in your eyes," she muttered.

His head shot up at that and a glimmer of genuine surprise was nestled in the dark recesses of his eyes. "I've always respected you, Scully," he said.

His sincerity and his obvious unwillingness even in the heat of an argument to let her believe he didn't respect her were worth forgiving him for knowing about Chunky Monkey.

But leave it to Mulder to ignore - or perhaps not even notice - the easy way out.

"However, others who don't know how pleasantly enigmatic you are on normal days are usually a little, well, put-off," he continued, seemingly oblivious to her reaction. "That's why I try not to accept cases around this time of the month."

She didn't know how to respond to that. Hurling the stapler at his head was not a viable option. Not that she would not enjoy the satisfyingly hollow clunk it would make on his melon of a head. But, as a medical doctor, it would be up to her to staunch the flow of blood and her freshly-laundered white blouse was not up for yet another bloodbath.

And then, of course, the bastard would no doubt make her write the report on the incident.

"You are quite possibly the single most insensitive man on the entire planet," she told him honestly. "And if you happen to be correct about sentient extraterrestrial life, all the little gray women out there will no doubt agree that you are unrivaled for the distinction of Most Insensitive Male in the Cosmos."

"Do you suppose they have 800 numbers?"

Scully stared at him, unsuccessfully trying to decipher what was actually happening between them. Granted, they had had their share of catty arguments, but...

Maybe it was yet another strange cosmic syzygy. Yes, she decided. The House of Mulder's Head was no doubt ascending into the House of Mulder's Ass, creating a strong dominance in the imbecility of her pig-headed partner.

She heaved a sigh and plopped back down onto her chair, reaching underneath her to retrieve yet another soggy shell. She looked at it disconsolately for a moment before flicking it into her partner's cup of coffee. It was a silent but not unappreciated victory. The shell was followed quickly by a rubber band, a paper clip, and a dehydrated piece of tofu she found on her desk from yesterday's lunch.

Knowing Mulder, the tofu would bother him the most.

"Agents."

Scully hastily dropped the eraser she had been preparing to launch and stood. Mulder, surprised as well, promptly lost his somewhat tenuous balance atop the chair and both he and the stack of loose papers he had been holding ended somewhat unceremoniously on the ground.

Skinner waited until the papers finished their graceful, fluttering descent to the ground before asking, "Am I interrupting something, Agents?"

"No, sir, why do you ask?" Mulder nonchalantly crossed his arms and leaned against the cabinet... only to dislodge yet another vulnerable series of papers. Scully closed her eyes. Skinner rolled his.

"Your floor is covered with papers, Agent Mulder, and your partner is throwing office supplies into your coffee."

Mulder looked at Scully, askance. She ignored him and instead asked Skinner politely, "Is there something we can do for you, sir?"

"Please limit your arguments to a few decibels below the upper tolerance range for the human ear, Agents," said the assistant director pointedly. "The stockroom sent a complaint."

Scully shot Mulder a venomous look. He averted his gaze.

"I was not promoted to Assistant Director to babysit forlorn tofu-wielding special agents."

"Tofu?"

"Yes, sir," said Scully, her eyes downcast.

"Be in my office at 8:30 tomorrow morning. We need to review your last expense report," said Skinner, turning to leave. "Oh, and Mulder?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Write your own damn reports."

Skinner left.

"You were throwing tofu into my coffee, Scully?" Mulder demanded plaintively, walking over to his desk to assess the damage.

"The stockroom heard enough of our argument - our very personal, very embarrassing argument, incidentally - to file a complaint and you are worried about your coffee?"

Mulder was using the paper clip to fish out the tofu. "Well, yes, I'm worried about the coffee, Scully. All we have left down here is your stupid Sweet 'n' Low. I hate Sweet 'n' Low, Scully."

Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

Mulder's cell phone trilled shrilly and he gestured for Scully to get it from his coat pocket as he meticulously balanced the errant piece of tofu on the paper clip.

She heaved a melodramatic sigh and retrieved his phone from his pocket. Before opening the line, she blew sharply on the perilously-balanced tofu and sent it right back into the coffee, splattering Mulder's tie in the process. She grinned. The coffee stains almost made the tie more tolerable.

"Agent Mulder's phone, Agent Scully speaking."

"You make such a good secretary, Scully," Mulder murmured in her ear. She picked up the eraser she had dropped and tossed it into Mulder's coffee with an innocent smile. Another coffee splotch! At this rate, she could have Mulder's entire tie collection fixed by the end of the month.

"What are you doing calling a cell phone, Langly?" Scully said into the phone. "What happened to land lines being more secure?"

Mulder took the phone from her. "What do you want, Langly?" he asked, watching as Scully idly dunked his favorite pen into his coffee. "Where?" Pause. "Are you sure?" Pause. "We'll be right there." He snapped the phone shut and stuffed it into his suit jacket. He headed for the door, grabbing his trenchcoat on the way, and said, "Come on, Scully, we've got a date with the Gunmen."

She sighed, folded her trenchcoat over her arm, and locked the office door behind her. She could hear Mulder already at the opposite end of the hall, impatiently punching the elevator call button. She sighed again.

"You don't know where we're going?"

"Look, Scully," said Mulder patiently as he guided the Taurus on the desolate highway, "Langly said it was a big and that it was going down in an hour. He didn't have time to tell me exactly what we're doing or where exactly we're doing it. He just said to follow this highway until we see them."

"Who is "them"? "Them" with a capital "T" them? Or "them" as in the Gunmen? Or "them" as a sweeping generic pronoun you typically use when you have given in to your suspicious and paranoid nature and are trying to keep me in the dark?"

Mulder shot her a look. "Don't have enough office supplies to keep you entertained, eh Scully?"

"You spilled your own coffee on your own lap, Mulder," she said, looking out the window to watch the desolation sweep past. "I didn't need to bring any office supplies with me."

"Hopefully that made room for plenty of Midol?" he muttered, returning his attention to the road.

If she punched him in the face, he would no doubt lose control of the car, she reasoned silently to herself. And then she'd have to explain the bruise. She sighed... then perked up. If she punched him in the chest, he could still keep his eyes on the road and any marks would be hidden by clothing. She would have to wrap her hand, though, so any evidence that it had been indeed her hand that had inflicted the wound would be obscured. Her trenchcoat would be perfect... It was all part of being in forensics, no problem. In fact, she could probably kill him with her own hands and make it look like suicide. Hmmm...

"If you smack me, we'll spin out on this gravel and die. And that won't look like suicide."

"How the hell did you┘ ?" Scully began.

"You think I'm emotionally unstable, Scully. You know plenty about me to say something that would do irreparable damage to me, but you won't do it precisely because it would be irreparable. So you'd punch me instead. Once you get tired of talking yourself out of it, of course."

"Don't profile me," was the only response she could make to his matter-of-fact reasoning. "I'm your partner, not a serial killer, dammit." She looked at him balefully. "And just because you tempt me to hurt you the way you hurt me doesn't mean that I'd actually hit you."

"I don't mean to hurt you."

It was said with sincerity and Scully melted just a little bit. "I know you don't. And that's why I've never said anything that would really hurt you either, Mulder." She sighed. One day, she promised herself, they were going to take the fact that they knew each other inside and out and put it to good use... like being able to converse like civil, rational adults. Maybe, if they worked really hard they could even manage to see from the other's perspective. She sighed again.

"I don't want to see from your point-of-view, Scully," Mulder commented, doing another one of his famous mind-readings. "I don't much like PMS from this angle. I can't imagine it would be any better from yours."

"Mulder!" she protested.

She didn't have the time to form a comeback. A flash of light enveloped the car and with the screeching of tires, everything went black. 


	2. Chapter 2

Scully awoke with a throbbing headache. Her entire head pounded to the loud and rather obnoxious beating of her heart. She opened her eyes cautiously, felt the bright sunlight assail her brain with unneeded stimuli, and then closed them mercifully once more, careful to balance her head on the steering wheel. The last thing her head needed was more abuse.

Wait.

She hadn't been driving.

Her eyes snapped open and she flew upright in the seat. A kaleidoscope of colors exploded in her vision and she groaned.

Mulder groaned at the same time. As soon as her vision cleared, she looked over the passenger seat...

And saw herself.

A rather bloody and tattered version of herself, but herself nonetheless.

"Oh my God," she said... and heard Mulder's voice.

She looked down at her hands... but they weren't her hands. She flexed... and a pair of large masculine hands flexed back at her. She opened the vanity mirror and blinking in the harsh sunlight made out the handsome, squinting visage of her partner. She blinked... the image blinked. She shook her head... the image shook its head.

Mulder moaned softly. Except that it was her voice. And when he touched his face, they were her hands and her face.

She watched him come to the same epiphany that she had. He did it with considerably less grace, of course. She noted with something akin to resignation that while she had tested her hypothesis with the mirror, he had immediately touched "his" breasts.

"Wow, I get to take these home with me??" he quipped... and then the entire effect of the joke was lost when he looked utterly flabbergasted at having spoken with a woman's voice.

"Don't abuse them," Scully muttered. She waved at her partner - herself - and said, "This is unbelievable." She then noticed that Mulder was sitting in her body the same way he sat in his own and ordered crisply, "Cross your legs!"

She looked into her own eyes which betrayed the Mulder inside. "I will, but only if you promise never, ever, ever to do that hand-flutter thing you just did in my body." He flipped down the mirror and blanched. He brought a hand to his hair slowly and delicately touched the red strands. "Scully, your hair is beautiful," he breathed in something akin to awe.

"Mulder, we don't have time for you to suddenly start throwing compliments out... especially since you're currently the owner of that beautiful hair," muttered Scully.

"No, I'm serious," said Mulder, still engrossed with the hair. "I've never seen it before. Or at least the way other people do." He caught her look of confusion. "Red-green colorblind, remember?"

"Oh." How strangely sweet that he should be so enthralled with her hair... She sighed. "Oh God, Mulder," she mumbled, attempting to slouch down in the seat though her knees hit the dash before she could quite manage the feat. She rubbed her hands over her face. "What the hell is going on?"

Mulder snapped the mirror shut. "My guess would be the "something big" that Langly mentioned on the phone," he offered, flexing his fingers - her fingers? - and arms to check for injuries. He brought a hand to his forehead and winced when they encountered blood.

Scully shot up in the seat... and smacked her head on the roof of the car. "Ouch, dammit," she muttered. "Can the Gunmen fix this?" she asked, not even bothering to hide her enthusiasm.

"Only one way to find out. To the Lone Gunmen's!"

They both paused and looked at the crumpled remains of their car, which was essentially wrapped around a rather large and formidable tree. The only large and formidable tree, Scully noted, in the area. "Should I bother trying to see if the car will start?" she asked.

Mulder snorted, though it sounded positively painful from a female throat. He started fiddling with the seatbelt. "We should check the engine. The last thing I want to do is let you blow us up."

"What do you know about cars, Mulder?" Scully asked, raising an eyebrow... though even that simple action felt uncomfortable. Mulder was apparently not one to exercise his eyebrow muscles. She would fix that.

"Just because I'm in a woman's body doesn't mean that I don't know cars, Scully," Mulder said, getting out of the car. He took two steps... and then disappeared.

"Mulder?" asked Scully in apprehension. She unlatched her own seatbelt and opened the opened the door... and promptly banged her head into the doorframe. "Dammit!" she swore under her breath, massaging the ache away. "I'm a foot taller now..."

She got out and found Mulder sitting rather unceremoniously on the ground.

"How do you walk in these, Scully?" Mulder lamented.

"Practice," said Scully with a snide look as she hoisted her partner up... and almost sent him flying. She had underestimated the strength of Mulder's body as she had apparently overestimated his weight in her body. "Sorry about that." She moved towards the hood.  
"Good God, Jesus, I can change into flats, Scully, but men's hips weren't designed to do that."

She turned around and looked at her partner. "Excuse me?"

"You're walking like a girl." The accusation lost some of its intended effect as he stumbled towards her, his ankles weaving in and out perilously as he waved his arms around in an attempt to keep his tenuous balance.

Scully snorted and turned her attention back to the car. "Do you suppose it's drive-able?" she asked.

"Only one way to tell." Mulder made a move towards the driver's side of the car but Scully beat him to it.

"I'm not sure your little feet can reach the pedals," she told him saucily... and promptly smashed her groin against the steering wheel as she attempted to right herself in the seat.

That was a sensation she would not soon forget. She moaned piteously.

Mulder snickered.

Scully gave him the Look and asked innocently, "What day is it, Mulder?"

"Tuesday the 20th, why?"

She smiled at him innocently. "Why, only that your menstrual cycle is due in two days."

He turned a ghastly shade of white.

She smirked. Served him right. 


	3. Chapter 3

Knock, knock, knock.

"Guys it's me, open the damn door."

Frohike and Langly exchanged suspicious glances. Scully bellowing through the front door a la Mulder? Frohike ran through a mental list: Shapeshifter? Probably not, but he gestured for Langly to pick up the ice pick they had bought for just such an occasion.. Intoxication? Even less likely... but far more attractive, he had to admit. Bad day and she was taking it out on them? Wouldn't be the first time. And come to think of it, it was getting to be about that time of the month for her... He checked the calendar next to the door just to make sure, and grimaced. The look of near horror mirrored on Langly's face was almost comical. Almost. After all, she was walking through their door.  
With some trepidation, he started unlatching the many locks adorning the entrance to their abode and heard his two favorite FBI agents arguing in hushed tones across the wood.

"I would never have yelled like that," muttered Mulder. "Now they're going to think I'm as rude and impertinent as you are."

"Hey, I'm a lady. Show some manners, you big oaf," said Scully. "And do you always get a crick in your neck looking up at me when you're trying to talk to me?"

Langly and Frohike shared a frown. Mulder having to look up at Scully?

"That's why I wear heels," Mulder said.

Frohike blanched. Mulder? In heels? "The bugs never picked that one up," he muttered to himself.

"Are you sure we should open the door?" Langly stage-whispered to Frohike.

Frohike paused in indecision for a moment, then took a deep breath and opened the door.  
"What the hell took you so long?" demanded Scully, breezing inside.

Was she...? Dear Lord, she wasn't wearing any shoes. Frohike almost passed out.

Maybe Mulder was borrowing them...? Langly thought.

Mulder, uncharacteristically staying quiet and following in her wake, smashed his head against a low-hanging piece of equipment and muttered a fairly hefty curse.

"And what the hell were we supposed to have seen out there, Langly?" Scully asked, turning to the unsuspecting gangly blond.

"Are you feeling all right, Agent Scully?" Byers inquired politely.

That drew both Scully and Mulder to a pause. "Oops," said Scully sheepishly.

"Oops is right, Mulder," said Mulder, with an arched eyebrow.

The Lone Gunmen just stared. 


	4. Chapter 4

"So let me get this straight," Langly said, taking his glasses off and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're Mulder," he concluded, pointing to the petite, redheaded female. To the tall, broad-shouldered, distinctly male individual at her side, he added, "And you're Scully."

"Looks that way," said Mulder with an offhand shrug, picking at one of his newly- acquired polished nails.

"The question is," Scully interrupted briskly, glaring at her partner for picking at the nails she had so diligently polished, "what to do about it?" With something close to a growl, she fumbled with her tie and suit jacket and eventually, after a struggle at which none of her companions risked laughing, deposited both in a pile on a nearby chair.

"Hey, that's an Armani, Scully," Mulder protested, jumping up and draping the jacket protectively over the back of his chair.

Scully ignored him and stared at Byers pointedly.

Byers looked uncomfortable. "We'll research it, Agent, um, Scully," he promised her. "But I can't make any guarantees. We're dealing with a completely foreign technology here. We'll call you as soon as we find something. We "

"For godsakes, Frohike, what the hell are you looking at?"

Heads swivelled around to look at Mulder whose now blue eyes were shooting daggers at Frohike. "You're making me sick, Troll," added Mulder shortly.

"You're a beautiful woman, Mulder," Langly offered with a snort of laughter. "What man wouldn't look at you?"

Byers tactfully cleared his throat instead of chortling.

"My mind is perfectly intact," offered Scully, a faint smile pulling at her lips as she couldn't resist baiting the shortest Gunmen. "You always said my mind was the most attractive thing about me, Frohike. It's still here. Would you like it?"

Frohike turned green.

"Not in my body, you don't," Mulder warned her, looking a little green himself.

Scully looked thoughtful. "Do you know what this means, Mulder?" she asked him speculatively. "This redefines our concepts of human sexuality. You're in a woman's body, pumped full of female hormones, in a body that has always been heterosexual... and yet you have retained your original views of your own sexuality." She seemed intrigued. "This would seem to indicate that sexuality is environmental, rather than genetic, part of the mind rather than the body."

"I love it when you talk dirty, Scully," Mulder said. "Though the fact that your body has "always been heterosexual" does put a damper on some of my more vivid fantasies."

Frohike looked fascinated as well. "You know, Agent Scully is on the right track here. This changes everything." His eyes lit up with excitement. "Why, you could find a delectable young chicklet, Mulder, and with a good camcorder, a nice corset, and a cat-o'-nine-tails┘"

"I thought you were just fixated on sex, not perverted," Langly interrupted.

"Did you know that BDSM stands for bondage/discipline-dominance/submission- sadism/masochism?" Mulder volunteered helpfully.

"Did you know that the terms "sadism" and "masochism" are derived from two nineteenth-century fellows, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and the Marquis de Sade, who respectively loved being dominated and humiliated by women and thought that the desire to inflict pain upon others was an integral part of human nature?"

Everyone turned to stare at Scully.

"Did you get that from Mulder's brain or have you - " and Frohike squeaked this last part out - "actually researched it?"

"Back to the case at hand," interrupted Byers smoothly, shooting a glare in Frohike's general direction, "we will try to have answers for you as soon as possible. Unfortunately, when we received the tip this morning, it was extremely vague and I doubt we can reach our informant again so soon." He continued hurriedly, seeing the look of near panic on both agents' faces. "But we have many informants and they have a lot of information... hence the name, um, informant. We'll figure something out." He looked at them critically: a man sitting with his legs crossed primly and his hands folded demurely in his lap; a woman sprawled out on a chair with her legs wide open and her shoulders hunched over. "In the meantime, perhaps you should try to become a little more convincing in your new roles?" he suggested.

Mulder and Scully looked at each other and sheepishly tried to adjust their stances accordingly.

The room was suddenly filled with a blaring klaxon. Both Mulder and Scully jumped to their feet - Scully unceremoniously bashing her head against a dangling craft for the second time during this visit, though this time she managed to refrain from using the more colorful metaphorical language she had inherited from her father - and Byers's eyes darted around the room. "Someone tripped an alarm," he informed the bewildered FBI agents in a near whisper. He looked to Frohike. "Delta echo one."

Mulder mouthed the words and shot Scully a questioning glance. She shrugged.

"Intruder," Frohike said, answering their unspoken question.

"An intruder?" Mulder repeated. "I thought you guys kept this place locked tighter than┘"

"Shut up and get ready," snapped Frohike over his shoulder as he disappeared around a corner.

And then they heard a scuffle in the other room and the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.

Mulder instinctively reached for his shoulder holster.

Scully instinctively reached for her gun at her back..

And by the time Mulder fumbled his gun from his back and Scully wrestled her gun out of her shoulder holster, Langly was standing directly in front of them, pointing a cocked and ready Smith and Wesson directly at Mulder's head.

"Food for thought," Byers said noncommitally as Langly lowered the gun and both Mulder and Scully relaxed.

"You could have just told us we were overlooking some of the finer points of switching bodies," muttered Mulder, flopping down in the chair after replacing his gun.

Frohike reappeared and snorted. "Yeah right," he said. "And you would have just worried about crossing your legs and walking in heels without even considering the greater ramifications if this turns out to be more... permanent."

"You sure know how to break up a party," Mulder said by way of breaking the silence that followed Frohike's words.

"Looking like that, you're a party waiting to happen," muttered Frohike.

Mulder snapped his legs shut and growled an obscenity.

"When you guys do find something, call one of our cell phones. We're going to..." Scully's voice trailed off and she blinked once, twice... and a look of complete consternation fell upon her features.

"Agent Scully?" Langly inquired, voicing the concern that was written on the faces of his companions.

"I, uh, I'm..." she began with a helpless gesture of her hand, but then lapsed once more into silence, looking completely bewildered and almost - almost - panicky. She lowered her gaze slowly to her lap. Everyone's eyes followed hers... and the reaction was immediate.

Langly snickered once, then started coughing as an attempt to cover it up.

Frohike averted his gaze.

Byers cleared his throat.

Mulder, always articulate and always sensitive, said, "Oh, for godsakes, Scully..."

And Scully sat there helplessly, having no idea what to do and getting more and more embarrassed by the second.

Byers immediately latched onto her chagrin and took pity on her. "Put it under your belt, Agent Scully," he suggested, not without compassion.

"My... my belt?" Scully repeated uncomprehendingly. "It isn't... it isn't already there? Under the... belt?"

"Under the waistband, Agent Scully," Byers clarified, his cheeks looking suspiciously pink beneath his immaculately trimmed beard. "That will - ahem - hold it... up. So you... so you can't tell that it's... yes.." He looked almost as flustered as Scully.

"Oh." Scully looked ready to cry at any moment. "I - I don't...?"

"Oh, for godsakes, Scully," Mulder said again, jumping to his feet and tugging on Scully's arm until she stood as well.

The Gunmen all averted their eyes simultaneously... except for Frohike, who took an extra moment to mutter, "Hung like a fucking horse. No wonder┘" Langly slapped him upside the head and he lapsed into petulant silence.

Scully still looked ready to burst into tears.

Mulder quickly and efficiently pulled the waistband of her dress pants away from her skin, poked the cause of her problems completely upright, and secured it in place by releasing the waistband. "Jesus, Scully, for being a doctor "

"I'm sorry," she whispered, shame-faced, regaining her seat with downcast eyes.

Mulder immediately felt like an asshole; it was a familiar enough feeling that he could readily identify it, after all. It wasn't her fault that she had never been a man before and had no idea how to be one. And it certainly wasn't her fault that her inexperience was embarrassing him. No doubt it was embarrassing her far more than it was him. Especially since he couldn't restrain a smug little smile at Frohike's reaction.

A glance at the Gunmen showed equal self-loathing on their parts. Except for Byers, of course, who had responded out of compassion and was instead giving his share of loathing to Mulder.

Out of habit, he started to kneel in front of her... and then realizing that he was already at eye level with her, he stopped. "I'm sorry, Scully," he said honestly. "I didn't... I... I'm sorry," he finished lamely.

She didn't respond immediately. In fact, she took long enough that Mulder started getting scared. But then she met his gaze and smiled faintly. "It's okay." And then her eyes took on a decidedly mischievous look. "After all,"she continued innocently, "you still have to teach me how to pee standing up."

The Gunmen breathed a collective sigh of relief. All was well.

"Ouch! Dammit, Scully, I'm not wearing shoes. Watch what you're doing."

"I'm not used to having feet bigger than my arms used to be, Mulder!"

Well, almost all was well. Close enough.

"We'll stop by the shooting range first," Scully was saying briskly, back to business. She eyed Mulder as he wiggled his toes in their - ruined - stockings and amended, "After we stop by the mall and get you some shoes you can actually stand in."

"And some Tylenol," Mulder added.

"Is it cramps?"

Frohike chortled.

"How the hell should I know?" Mulder asked her testily, looking around for something convenient to hurl at Frohike... besides insults to his manhood, of course. He smirked.

"Uh huh," Scully said noncommitally. "There's Midol in your purse. You should take it now before it gets any worse."

"And I heard there's a two-for-one deal on Chunky Monkey at SaveMart," Langly piped up helpfully from his computer terminal across the room.

Scully whirled on the unsuspecting Gunmen, roaring, "What is it with the Chunky Monkey? I want all those bugs out of my apartment right now!" When she got blank stares, she elaborated, "Now"  
"It's just routine surveillance, Agent Scully," protested Langly weakly. "This is how we know what to tell Mulder when you disappear, or vice versa."

"You've got bugs in my place too? For godsakes," muttered Mulder.

"We're leaving, Mulder," Scully ordered, snapping up her discarded jacket and tie and heading out.

Mulder followed her but stopped right by the door. He jabbed with his index finger at the same calendar whose contents had so petrified Frohike and Langly earlier and growled, "You guys have two days to fix this. Got that? Two days. Any longer and there won't be enough Chunky Monkey in the civilized world to save you." With that, he marched out, mumbling under his breath, "Oh man, I've got cramps..." 


	5. Chapter 5

"Don't make eye contact with anyone," Mulder was telling her in hushed, conspiratorial tones, his eyes betraying the gravity of the situation. "Don't look down, don't look at anyone around you; look straight ahead. Choose one as far away from anyone else as possible. Don't make conversation. Don't hum and for godsakes, don't whistle. Just go in and come out."

She nodded briskly once, drew herself up to her full height - which was rather impressive now that she was in Mulder's body - and marched into the men's room.

"And if you use a stall, never sit down! The last five-hundred thousand guys who used it didn't sit either and rest assured, they have worse aim than you!" Mulder hollered after her, ignoring the stares of the mall-goers around him.

She survived medical school. She had bested all expectations at Quantico. She had triumphed over necrophiliacs, Whammies, hallucinogenic fungi, and even an insane, alien-chasing partner. She chopped up dead people for a living, for godsakes. She could handle this.

Or at least Mulder fervently hoped so.

It was her fault for having the Diet Coke, he reasoned to himself as he loitered outside the men's bathroom. If she had waited, then she would have been able to pee for the first time in the privacy of her own bathroom.

Please, please don't let her pee on the Armani...

"What the hell...??"

The startled voice had come from the men's bathroom. Oh God... A multitude of possibilities ran through Mulder's mind: she had been unable to extricate herself from the boxers and had wet herself and ruined the most expensive pair of pants Mulder owned; she had asked the man next to her how to hold herself; or, even worse, she had looked to see how he was doing it; she had developed another spontaneous erection and had asked the man next to her how to urinate in such a condition... Oh God, and what if it was a gay guy? Mulder covered his eyes and restrained a groan.

"Daddy, what was that man doing?" asked a young child, looking over his shoulder back into the bathroom whence he had come.

His father tugged on his arm. "Don't worry about it, son," said the father, shooting a disgusted look over his shoulder at the bathroom. "There are weird people in the city."

Mulder started hyperventilating.

What the hell was taking her so long?

He started pacing.

What...

The...

Hell...

Was...

Taking...

Her...

So...

Long???

He was considering organizing a Search and Rescue team and wondering how exactly he would go about explaining the needed manpower to Skinner when she finally emerged. He took a quick inventory of her appearance. Jacket, check. Dress shirt, check. Pants, check. Pants unblemished, check. Whew. His breathing rate returned to a semblance of normalcy.

"What the hell took you so long?" he demanded.

She glowered at him for a moment, then studiously ignored him, increasing her pace.

"Scully ?" He had to run to catch up to her.

"You forgot to mention a few things, Mulder," she growled at him.

He frowned. "Like what?"

"Like you didn't mention that you're not supposed to take your pants and your boxers all the way off."

Mulder stopped dead in his tracks. "You... you did what?" he said disbelievingly.

"You heard me, Mulder," Scully snapped. "And you made it sound so damn important that I not look at anyone else, so I didn't know what I was doing wrong until I was done!"

Mulder took a moment to absorb this, but had to ask, "You - you took your pants all the way off?"

"Shut up, Mulder."

"And your boxers?"

"Shut up, Mulder."

"Like they were around your ankles?"

"Shut up, Mulder!"

After only a few more mishaps - like, for example, Mulder disappearing for a suspiciously long period of time into Victoria's Secret while he was supposed to be getting reasonable shoes; or Scully accidentally signing "Dana Scully" to get into the shooting range - the intrepid pair of FBI agents stood side-by-side, holding their respective weapons and looking with foreboding at the targets.

"We both know how to shoot," Scully said uncertainly, trying to convince herself. "It should be no different in another body, right?"

"Right," Mulder agreed doubtfully, the expression on his face belying his misgivings.

Scully looked at the target, noticed that it appeared significantly shorter now that she was significantly taller, felt the increased weight of Mulder's gun as opposed to her lighter model... and looked back at her partner helplessly.

"Hell, it's just a target, right? We've both shot more of these than we can remember, right? So let's just do it, partner." With that, Mulder pulled his protective headset on - tangling it in his hair in the process, of course - and waited for her to do the same.

She nodded once and put her own headgear on. Ready? she mouthed.

Ready, was his silent response.

By the time the sound finished reverberating around the room, Mulder was on his back halfway across the room and Scully was picking herself up off the floor from where she had stumbled. She ripped her headset off. "Oh, for Pete's sake," she muttered, gaining her feet and brushing off her slacks.

"Please tell me that was an explosion," Mulder groaned from his convenient locale upon the floor, rubbing his shoulder.

Scully looked embarrassed. "As a physics major, it should have occurred to me, but..." She sighed and watched Mulder gingerly stand up. "My body's a lot lighter than yours and the backfire from the gun has a greater effect. I'm used to having to exert a force forward to keep from doing what you just did, so I stumbled forward in this more massive body when the force I exerted was greater than that of the gun's backfire." She grinned. "And that's why you ended up on your ass."

"Thanks a lot, partner," said Mulder, with a frown in her direction. His frown deepened when he looked at his target... his entirely unblemished target. "Great." He looked over at Scully's and noticed the small hole in the target's head. "How the hell did you manage to hit that?" he asked peevishly.

"I've always been a better shot than you, Mulder," she told him honestly. "But to be honest, I was aiming for his heart."

"Maybe if you took your pants all the way off, you'd aim better."

Scully shot him a look, but prided herself on being mature enough to ignore him. Once. "Ready to try again, partner?" she asked him, replacing her headset.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," mumbled Mulder, taking his stance.

Scully hissed a sigh and took her headset off again. "Mulder, you can't shoot like you did in this body," she said as if she were talking to a small child. "It just won't work. You're going to end up on your ass every time."

"Well, then how should I shoot, Scully?" demanded Mulder in frustration. "At your whopping height of four feet, I can't even see the damn thing. And if that isn't bad enough, I can hardly stand in even these shoes. You should've just let me get sneakers, for godsakes. What's more important, a viable partner or a fashion statement?"

When he was done with his diatribe, Scully said merely, "If you're done screaming at me, Mulder, why don't you try shooting again, this time realizing that the effect of the gun's backfire will be much greater and planting your feet accordingly?"

Realizing that he was wasting his energy being juvenile, Mulder heaved a melodramatic sigh and took his shooting stance. "This okay?" he asked.

Scully eyed him critically. "Your right shoulder is a little high," she concluded... then snickered. "And you're, ahem, thrusting your chest out."

"I'm trying to balance them, Scully," said Mulder somewhat testily

"They're not going to fall off, Mulder. And I promise you're not top heavy enough for it to make that much of a difference." Scully congratulated herself on delivering this bit of news with a completely straight face. She watched Mulder unsuccessfully try to orient his new limbs around him in some semblance of order, then sighed. "Here, Mulder," she said, setting her gun down and coming up behind him. "Shoot like you just did."

"Hell no I'm not shooting like that again," he said, glaring at the floor behind him as if it had somehow been responsible for his mishap.

"I'll catch you the first time, so you can feel the backfire, okay?" Scully said with a little less patience. "And then you'll know what to fix instead of worrying about not hurting yourself."

Mulder looked at her dubiously, then obediently adjusted his headset. He looked back at her to make sure she was ready and at her nod, he aimed at the target and fired.

To give Scully credit, he didn't end up across the room and on his ass. Of course, both his impractically-clad feet had slipped out from underneath him and Scully's arms were the only thing keeping him from disgracing himself once again. And two large, masculine hands were in an awfully less-than-partnerly place on his body.

Figures that the only time Fox Mulder would get his hands on Dana Scully would be when he was Dana Scully.

Not that what she was doing felt particularly bad. In fact, it felt almost

Whoa, boy!

Er, girl.

"Did you feel what you did wrong?" Scully was asking him, setting him on his feet properly.

He was feeling a lot of things at the moment. Wait... what was the question? "Actually, yeah," he admitted, then took a look at his target. "Oh, for Christ's┘" The target was as pristine as ever.

"Don't worry, Mulder," said Scully with a faint smile. "Now that you know how to fix your stance, you can concentrate on aiming."

"Right." He watched as Scully put her headset back on and fired three shots in rapid succession, all three dead-centering the heart of her target.

"Show off," he muttered disconsolately.

Aside from varying minor injuries, the rest of the hour spent at the shooting range was relatively uneventful. Both of them could shoot accurately, if not quite as well as before, though drawing her gun turned out to be a more formidable problem for Scully than actually shooting. Still, it had been a profitable trip and Mulder told her so, though half his brain was occupied in trying to drive in those ridiculous shoes.

She didn't respond to his comment and instead asked, "What if this turns out to be permanent, Mulder?"

"You get a free subscription to Celebrity Skin and a tank full of dead fish?"

Scully sighed. "I'm serious, Mulder. I'm not much of a profiler. And God forbid you should be in the same room as a cadaver."

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to borrow trouble?"

Scully jumped. "My mother! I was supposed to have coffee with her tonight! What time is it?" It was rhetorical question, of course, since she was already looking at her watch. "Mulder, drive straight to my mom's house."

It was Mulder's turn to blanch. "Uh, Scully? I don't think we're equipped to be having company in our present state," he pointed out. "We're... you know. And your mom will be able to tell."

"Just remember to call her "Mom" and I'll remember to flinch when she calls me "Fox" and we'll be fine, Mulder."

"She's your mother, Scully," Mulder said plaintively. "She'll know. She's going to ask me something about Maybelline or cooking or chiffon or tampons or any combination of cutting, cleaning, waxing, plucking, filing, shaving, or sewing... and I just don't know a damn thing about tampons, Scully. I couldn't even follow the directions in the box, Scully. I'll have to tell her that I'm Mulder inside your body and she'll think it's some kind of euphemism and that I really knocked you up and for godsakes, Scully, I've never had to tell anyone's mother I knocked her daughter up and I'm not going to start now."

Scully's eyebrow slowly migrated to her hairline. "Mulder?" she queried.

"What?"

"How do you know there are directions in tampon boxes, Mulder?"

Mulder resisted the urge to strangle her, realizing that it simply wasn't tactically possible without something to augment his tiny hands. "Scully, there is no way in hell you can drag me to your mother's house like this. I can't pretend to be her daughter. I wouldn't even if I could." He looked straight at his partner and gripped her by the shoulders, barely refraining from shaking some sense into her. "Listen to me, Scully. You will have to reschedule. I know it will be a pain for your mother and I know that you would like to see her. But not now. I unequivocally, unconditionally, unquestionably refuse to go to your mother's until we can get this sorted out." 


	6. Chapter 6

"Fox! What a surprise. Dana, you should have told me Fox would be coming with you."

Margaret Scully embraced her daughter briefly and accepted a bouquet of flowers from her partner. "Why, Fox, they're lovely!" she praised, smiling over the unusually beautiful bouquet. Fox's manners had always been impeccable - he had never come to dinner without either wine or flowers for his hostess - but his choice in blossoms was always rather poor... She smiled faintly, remembering some of the less aesthetic arrangements he had presented.

"Um, sorry... Mom," Dana was saying, picking at her nails. "Sc Mulder and I were, um, working late."

Maggie looked at her daughter strangely. "Don't worry, Dana, you know Fox is always welcome here." She smiled at Fox for emphasis, gesturing the pair into her home.

There seemed to be a little problem getting through the door. Maggie watched with a somewhat bemused expression on her face, her eyebrow migrating closer and closer to her hairline as she beheld the spectacle unfolding before her. Both Fox and Dana each took a step forward and collided in the doorway. Then both retreated, looking confused. After another series of false starts, Fox gestured for Dana to go first and then couldn't seem to decide which hand to put at the small of her back. And then Fox walked straight into a plant hanging suspended from the ceiling.

"Fox!"

"No, I'm all right," Fox said, rubbing the sore spot on his head with one hand and steadying the now swaying plant with his other. "I, um, forgot that was there. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Maggie assured him, then gestured behind her. "I'll get you an ice pack for your head, Fox. Dana, please take Fox into the dining room and pour some coffee."

"Um, sure," said Dana a little blankly.

Fox whispered something to her and she nodded once quickly and headed towards the dining room. Of course, if Fox didn't catch her sleeve and steer her back on course, she would've missed the dining room by ten feet and ended up in the sitting room.

Maggie watched them, her eyes wide. Try as she might, she couldn't come up with a decent reason why both her daughter and her partner would be acting so strangely in tandem. Dana certainly had her strange moments and Fox, bless his heart, didn't seem to have anything but. But something was... amiss.

She watched as Fox went through her kitchen, flawlessly choosing the correct cupboards for coffee mugs, Sweet 'N' Low, and coasters, as Dana sat at the dining room table in silence, picking at her nails. Since when did Fox know...?

Photographic memory. Someone must have served him coffee during an earlier visit and simply remembered where everything was. Maggie shook her head. Paranoia was Fox's thing, not hers.

She retrieved a small ice pack for Fox's head - he had hit that plant awfully hard... she would have to check the poor thing after he left - and sat down with her daughter and her partner, noticing that Fox was shaking the last remnants of a package of Sweet 'N' Low into his coffee and Dana was drinking hers straight. Curious. She knew Dana would normally never touch black coffee and she could have sworn Fox would drink nothing but...

"Here, Fox, put this on your head," Maggie instructed him. "Would you like some Tylenol?"

"No, I'm fine, M-Mrs. Scully, thank you," said Fox, obediently plopping the ice pack on the offending spot of his cranium.

As Maggie idly chatted about Bill's family and Charlie's Naval escapades, she thoughtfully studied her company.

Either they were sleeping together or something was more wrong with them than normal, she concluded.

No ring. Dammit. 


	7. Chapter 7

"Your mother is a dear woman, Scully, but I am really, really, really glad that is over." Pause. "Uh, Scully? You okay?"

"My mother thinks we're sleeping together, Mulder."

"So does half the Bureau. The other half thinks we also have an alien lovechild."

"Mulder, I'm serious. Mom took me aside and told me to make an honorable woman out of you."

"I'm glad it was you and not me."

"Dammit, Mulder. Can you be serious?"

"I was, Scully. Your mother is a wonderful woman, she really is. But she scares the hell outta me. If she came up to me the day we got back from Bellefleur and told me to quit the X- Files, marry you, and buy you a house with a picket fence and a Pomeranian, I would have."

"Leave Pomeranians out of this."

Pause.

"My face itches, Scully."

"Stop whining."

"It feels like it's going to crack."

"You're going wear that damn facial even if it feels like Virgil Incanto pulled another bulemic act on your face."

"I could have dealt without that kind of imagery, Scully."

"Then stop whining."

Pause.

"Your feet smell, Scully."

"Higher levels of hormones can often heighten your olfactory perception, Mulder. And having no doubt taken basic biology at Oxford, I'm sure you know that just prior to menstruation, there is "

"La la la la... I can't hear you."

"Good. Now in that sanctuary of self-induced silence, go to sleep. I'd rather sleep than deal with you."

"Maybe if you took your boxers all the way off, it would┘ Ouch!" 


	8. Chapter 8

Scully wasn't exactly sure what had jolted her awake. It could've been the scraping noise of her stubble across her pillow. It could've been the rather inopportune way she had rolled onto her stomach and realized the more uncomfortable aspects of the phenomenon known as morning wood. But when the phone rang again, she found her culprit.

"Huh-lo?" she mumbled groggily into the receiver, scrubbing at her eyes.

"Agent... Mulder? What the hell are you... why are you... there?"

If Scully had been conscious for even a minute longer before picking up the phone, she would have been cognizant enough to realize two things: One, that it was AD Skinner on the phone; and two, to Skinner, she was Mulder and not Scully.

But she was still half asleep.

"I... I live here, sir," she answered with a yawn, her voice muffled as she had once again buried her face in the pillow. "Why?"

"You. Live. There." It was said slowly, carefully.

Scully mumbled an affirmative through the pillow.

Pause. "Perhaps if you wake Agent Scully up this moment, you will only be two hours late for our meeting."

Scully shot up. Agent Scully? Meeting? Late? "Oh my God, what time is it?" She fumbled along her dresser to find her alarm clock.

"It is past "fashionably late", Agent." Click.

"Oh my God..." moaned Scully, cradling her head in her hands. "I just told... oh my God. Now Skinner thinks... oh my God."

"Wha ? Wha's goin' on?"

"Don't ask stupid questions," dictated Scully, nudging her sleeping partner with her foot... and then shaking him full-force by the shoulder when the nudging failed to get a response.

"... quarter pounder with cheese," was the subdued, less than eloquent response from her partner as he sought to bury his head ostrich-style in the nearest pillow. "... hold the salsa."

"Get out of bed and into the shower," ordered Scully, poking him into bleary-eyed consciousness and not even bothering to wonder who in the world would put salsa on a quarter pounder in the first place, let alone why he was thinking about that first thing in the morning. "Get moving! It'll take us a lot longer to make you look decent and we're already late.."

Mulder mumbled something - which sounded suspiciously like "Nazi", Scully noted - but acquiesced, staggering towards the bathroom in relative blindness as he rubbed at his eyes and snarled hair.

With a groan, Scully hefted herself off the bed and followed in Mulder's wake, ignoring the alarm clock her over-active male member knocked off the dresser as she turned.

"Scully, I have to pee," Mulder mumbled, trying to shut her out of the bathroom.

"This will only take a minute, so pay attention," said Scully, briskly retrieving all sorts of bottles from around her bathroom. "Volumizing shampoo; lather and rinse only once," she explained, showing him a bottle and clunking it down on the countertop. "Moisturizing conditioner; do this only once and rinse with warm water." clunk "Shine-enhancing conditioner; do this once too, but use cold water. You got that? Cold water. It makes the hair shine more." clunk "Moisturizing shaving gel; use only a dime-sized amount, rub it into a lather, and make sure it covers everywhere you're going to shave. And that had better only be your legs and armpits, you got that? No creative racing-stripes or... anything." clunk "Razor; shave against the grain of the hair and be careful of your knees... those are always hard to do."

Mulder's eyes got wider and wider as the once innocent pile of products swelled into a vast expanse of previously unknown and unheard of wares. He mouthed the words after her, bewildered and not a little terrified.

But if Scully noticed his distress, she didn't let on and instead continued with her tour of female hygiene. "Body spray; spray this lightly all over your body once you're out of the shower. Body lotion; put this on your arms and legs and don't worry about competing fragrances... all of my stuff is complimentary."

Competing fragrances? Mulder wondered blankly.

"Now hurry up and finish all this; I'm still going to have to do your hair and make-up," Scully said, turning around and shutting the door behind her.

She flopped back down on the bed... then groaned faintly and turned onto her back. Eyeing the cause of her discomfort suspiciously as it tented her boxers, she mumbled, "Does this thing do anything else?"

"It's just like a kid, Scully," Mulder called out from the bathroom.

Scully didn't know whether to be more surprised by his sudden cognition or his ability to hear her ramblings from behind a closed door.

"How exactly is a penis like a child, Mulder?" she found herself asking, not quite sure she wanted to hear his answer.

"If kids get cooped up in the house all day, they get a little... rambunctious," Mulder continued.

Scully looked down at the happy little organ. "Rambunctious" didn't even begin to describe it.

"They need to get out and play a little... baseball... every once in a while, Scully. Get rid of a little bit of energy." The toilet flushed.

Scully frowned. "I do not plan on, ahem, playing baseball any time soon, Mulder," she said, an eyebrow arched.. "More importantly, my body doesn't need to go out and play baseball either. You got that? No baseball."

"Awwww, Scully."

"No baseball, Mulder."

"I like baseball, Scully."

"NO BASEBALL"

"Yesssss, Scully."

Having bandaged the wounds Mulder had acquired during his shower-time war with the razor and instructed him on how exactly he should begin blow-drying his hair, Scully stepped gratefully into the shower. Her initial bliss was curbed slightly as she cracked her head against the showerhead, forgetting amidst the delicious steam that her shower was designed for someone a foot shorter than her current lanky frame. With a muffled curse, she detached the showerhead.

As she soaped up, her mind wandered - or rather, she had forced it to wander away from the task at hand, knowing that it was not a small distraction to be covering Mulder's body with suds.

Dana Katherine Scully, she admitted in resignation, was a man.

Five-year-old Dana would never have made the wish to be like her brothers if she knew how and when the change would come about. Being allowed to join Boy Scouts and going camping and tagging along with her brothers as a more active participant rather than "just" their little sister was not worth the actual acquisition of the determining Y chromosome.

But, she reasoned, if this was permanent, she would not have to face the gender- discrimination that had so haunted her since she had chosen science as her field. No one would try to shield her from a cadaver to protect her "feminine naivete". No one would ever presume to think that she couldn't run faster or shoot better than another man. True, she would inherit the Spooky Mulder stigmata her partner bore so well... but she could always go back to medical school and start over, this time without the huge disadvantage her sex had been.

But she didn't want to start over.

She had overcome that disadvantage and she was damn proud of it. She had come to enjoy the look of near astonishment men had given her when she announced that she was not only a practicing forensic pathologist but a field agent for the FBI as well. True, it had not always done wonders for her sex life... and there were not just a few men and women who had assumed that she had slept her way into her position. But she knew she had flourished despite the odds against her... and as the odds in her favor had diminished as she had taken it upon herself to join a man who wanted to single-handedly destroy all the Evil in the cosmos, she had not backed down from the challenge. Oh no, she had not given up.

And she would not.

If only she could get back to her own... OUUUUUUUUCH!!!

Mulder couldn't hear much as the blow-dryer roared directly into his ear. He couldn't see much either; the brush he had been so diligently attempting to use as per Scully's instructions to curl the tips of his hair was now ensnared in the organic net that had once been a beautiful mass of shiny, silken red but had now, through his concerted efforts, been reduced to an impenetrable mound of threads.

But even through his disjointed reality of hair care, he heard the howl of agony from Scully's bathroom. He dropped both the blow-dryer and the brush, the brush's handle now joining the bristles in the depths of his red afro, and swiftly went to Scully's aid.

"Scully?" he called apprehensively as he opened the bathroom door. The brush's handle caught the doorframe and Mulder yelped as his head was jerked back.

A circumspect grunt was his only indication that Scully was in the room.

"Are you... okay?" Mulder asked cautiously, rubbing his sore head and peering with some trepidation into the steam-filled room.

"Fine," Scully spat out from the bowels of the shower, her voice muffled by the steam.

"What happened?"

Scully paused. "You failed to mention the more adverse effects of getting soap in your urethra, Mulder."

Mulder shuddered involuntarily.

The water shut off and he instinctively made a motion to turn around and give Scully some privacy... but why bother?

Scully stepped out... and screamed.

Now Mulder had spent his entire life listening to his voice. True, he had always heard his voice through his own ears which may or may not have had any relation to what other people actually heard. But he knew his vocal cords had never before been called upon to form such a shrill, cacophonous sound, even during the awkwardness of his pre-pubescent years.

"What the hell did you do to my hair?" Scully wailed. 


	9. Chapter 9

Having informed Holly in unequivocal terms that she had not in fact overheard that a certain crackpot FBI agent was living with his firebrand partner, Walter Skinner sat back at his desk and settled in to finish the paperwork which had magically appeared in the twelve hours since he had departed the previous evening. He loathed paperwork... and despite how he had reprimanded Agent Mulder the previous morning for a similar transgression, he himself loaded an inordinate amount of his work on his secretary. While not wholly fair to Holly, it was a perk of being an assistant director... and she was being paid a rather hefty salary to do so. Scully, on the other hand, was Mulder's partner and her job was not to cater to his needs.

Though she had probably done a rather good job last night if Mulder's bleary, sluggishly careless remarks over the phone this morning were any indication.

Skinner stifled a snicker. How he would enjoy this meeting...

Inviting Mulder and Scully up to "discuss" their expense reports was always a highlight in an otherwise insipid day in the Hoover Building. Skinner almost looked forward to it as a relief from the more tedious aspects of his job. The two would walk in, Mulder invariably attempting to hide a sheepish brand of guilt behind a more cocky bravado and Scully alternating between serenity and apology as she couldn't decide whether to use her formidable intellect to defend her partner or her trusty Sig to just shoot him. As Mulder's explanations of the latest cell phone mishap - though Skinner had to admit that the "green alien goo" one was pretty good, right up there with the exploding manure factory - went into more and more detail, which was directly proportional to the implausibility of his tales, Scully would invariably inch father from the "defend" end and precariously closer to the "shoot" end of her Mulder spectrum. Very entertaining.

His intercom buzzed and with a rush of hope, he punched at the panel on the right-hand side of his desk and said, "Yes?"

"Sir, Agents Mulder and Scully are here for their 8:30 appointment."

"Thank you, Holly, please send them in," Skinner said, smiling slightly at the faint reprimand in his secretary's voice regarding Mulder and Scully's tardiness.

He shuffled the nearby reports into a haphazard pile away from the center of the desk and rifled through the appropriate desk drawer to retrieve the X-Files division's latest expense report. The door to his office swished open across the carpet and he looked up expectantly, adjusting his glasses on his nose... and then had to struggle not to balk.

Scully sauntered into his office in a rather Mulderesque manner, her usually precise strides having been replaced by a loose, floundering gait. Skinner couldn't decide if she simply was sore, a victim of the previous night's coital acrobatics, or just woke up without the ability to walk. What would have normally been an immaculately pressed and maintained jacket and skirt was adorned with a splotch of what she had no doubt had for breakfast... though by the looks of the stain, she had gotten more down the front of her than she had actually ingested. And... oh for the love of God!

She wasn't wearing pantyhose.

Now Walter Sergei Skinner was a professional man, a well-educated man, an honorable and honored man whose innate moral code was tested time and time again by the Power That Be, but who was otherwise a good, decent, ethically-sound man... but he was a man nonetheless. Dana Scully was a walking, talking wet dream, pure and simple. The fact that he had never said this to her was a result of his decent nature... and the fact that he did not relish a sexual harassment case or, god forbid, her Sig in his crotch. He could appreciate the irony in the situation: it had been Scully's iron will, her cool, professional intellect, and her passionate dedication to her partner and to her beliefs that had first distinguished her from the many lithe, beautiful, and qualified women in the FBI... but damn if seeing her a little tousled around the edges didn't throw Skinner for a loop.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and turned his attention to Mulder. Mulder was in better condition... in fact, the agent looked more put-together this morning than Skinner had ever seen him: suit pressed, jacket buttoned, tasteful tie, shined shoes. Everything was in its place.

Something was afoot.

"Have a seat, Agents," Skinner said, his eyes narrowing as he regarded them critically.  
Scully flopped into a seat. Mulder perched carefully, almost... delicately? Skinner's eyes widened.

"About last month's expense report," he said, shaking his head slightly, determined to ignore the duo's aberrant level of eccentricities. "Accounting and Financing simply had no idea what to do with this. It is of course necessary for agents to buy certain necessary items while on assignment and the Bureau of course covers these expenses... but you have written off over one- hundred dollars on your Personal Expenditures during a single three-day assignment. Would you care to explain how exactly you spent one-hundred dollars and had the audacity to put it under Personal Expenditures?" He looked expectantly at his two agents, noted their silences, and said, "Thank you for volunteering, Agent Mulder."

"Uh, sir..." His voice trailed off and he was silent for a moment before gathering his thoughts. "Agent Scully had to buy, ahem, female hygiene products while on the case."

Skinner expected Mulder to say any combination of bizarre things, anything from buying a tip from a crack-laden prostitute regarded a UFO sighting at her brothel to purchasing three rolls of aluminum foil to construct a helmet with which to counteract alien mind control. But commenting on Scully's rather intimate contribution to the over-wrought Personal Expenditures charge was not on the list.

"Thirty dollars on female hygiene products?" Scully squeaked before Skinner could say anything. "How many of those things did you buy??"

Skinner frowned.

"Agent Scully was feeling under the weather, sir, so I went out and got the necessary items for her," Mulder explained hastily, shooting a glare in Scully's general direction.

"Mmmhmm," Skinner said noncommitally, looking back and forth between the two agents, neither of which could meet his gaze. What the hell was going on? "That leaves seventy dollars unaccounted for, Agents," he prompted finally.

"Agent Mulder needed a new pair of shoes," said Scully, picking at her fingernails and not meeting Skinner's gaze.

"A new pair of shoes?" Skinner repeated slowly.

"Yes, sir."

"Why? And Agent Mulder, I would appreciate you answering this, seeing as it pertains to you. I'm tired of whatever game the two of you are playing here."

"Because he's the most irresponsible, irrational, insensitive man this side of Alpha Centauri," Mulder mumbled.

"Excuse me?" Skinner barked.

Mulder shot up in his chair, slamming his knees up against the underside of Skinner's desk. "I! I am the most irresponsible, irrational, insensitive man this side of Alpha Centauri!" he corrected hastily... then slumped back into his chair when he realized exactly what he said. He covered his eyes with a hand and tried not to grimace.

Skinner was having an epiphany. Alien shape-shifters did truly exist and one of them was sitting right in front of him, impersonating one Fox William Mulder. To be honest, he had never thought Mulder could possibly get any weirder. The man was the epitome of Weird.

If he was going to be like this every Morning After, Skinner really needed to consider giving the man a Valium drip. Or partnering him with Bertha "Big Mama" Wilkins from Missing Persons.

"Perhaps you would care to elaborate on that self-analysis, Agent Mulder?" Skinner inquired politely, priding himself on not succumbing to either a tirade or a fit of laughing, both of which were becoming precariously feasible outcomes of this conversation.

Mulder cleared his throat. "I ditched Agent Scully," he said. "Like I always do. Like the insensitive, oblivious man I am, I ditched her again to go chasing after the suspect. It either didn't occur to me that I could have easily been thwarted without her exceptionally skillful backup or I was too high on adrenaline and testosterone to wait for her as any good and decent partner would." He took a breath and added, "Sir."

Skinner opened his mouth to say something... and then shut it, unable to quite think of anything to say. But Scully solved the problem, for she was apparently tired of letting Mulder talk.

"But, of course, if I had believed him about the nature of the case and the suspect in question, he would never have felt he had to leave without me," she said. "The entire situation could have been avoided if I had simply recognized the truth in his convictions and had been prepared to follow through to its logical conclusion without going into scientific denial." Breath. "Sir."

"But I was running on instinct alone, sir, with no convincing evidence outside of my own confidence. I manipulated the otherwise innocent autopsy findings into supporting my wild theories."

"I simply couldn't trust him to know what he was talking about, even though he's been right in more than ninety-percent of all our cases!"

Mulder balked.

Scully seemed surprised she'd said that.

Skinner was massaging the bridge of his nose, trying to coax his headache from developing into a migraine.

"I trust you," said Mulder huskily, a hurt look on his face.

"In everything except my interpretations of the data at hand," Scully countered stonily. "Oh, it's certainly not a liver-eating mutant who hibernates every 30 years. Of course it's not mind-control. And just because I can't explain the scientific nature of the Whammy doesn't mean that it doesn't exist!"

"You don't accept my ideas either, you know," Mulder pointed out. "It's never just a bunch of teenagers making crop circles for fun, is it? It's never just a coincidence or a pseudo- scientist messing with your head just for kicks. No, it's always a government conspiracy or aliens or killer cockroaches here just to bask in the methane!"

"You're the only scientist who messes with my head!" snapped Scully.

The massage wasn't working; that migraine was on the next train in. "Agents Mulder and Scully," he said slowly, enunciating every word precisely. "You have ten seconds to be out of my office. If you do not have a good explanation for your actions by eight-thirty tomorrow morning, I will have you placed on wire-tap duty until you can. Is that understood?"

Scully gulped and mumbled, "Yes," looking down at her lap.

"Yes, sir," said Mulder briskly, dragging Scully out behind him.

"And that is eight-thirty, Agents!" he bellowed after them... then let his head drop into his palm, resisting a groan. He considered writing up censures for them... but what the hell was he going to write on it?

That was their game, he thought tiredly. Confuse everything to such a point that he couldn't remember who had said what in what order.

And he still didn't know what the hell had happened on their Personal Expenditures.

Son of a bitch. 


	10. Chapter 10

"What the hell were you thinking, Scully?" Mulder demanded, tripping and stumbling after his partner as she set her usual brisk pace, either not realizing or not caring that her now significantly longer legs made the pace actively uncomfortable for Mulder. Especially in those damn shoes.

"What the hell was I thinking?" repeated Scully, not even glancing over her shoulder. "You're the one who waltzed into our boss's office with no pantyhose! Do you have any idea how unprofessional that is? It will take me weeks to overcome this."

"The look on Skinner's face was unprofessional, I'll grant you that," acquiesced Mulder with a smirk.

"He always checks me out," snapped Scully irritably. "He's just never been given such an eyeful before today, Mulder. What the hell did you do with the pantyhose I gave you anyway?" She reached the door to their office and irritably began fumbling with her keyring to find the appropriate key.

"I couldn't put them on, Scully," Mulder growled testily. "They always snagged on your toenails. And those that actually made it over the feet were ripped to shreds by these talons you call fingernails."

"You destroyed all my nylons?" She started at him, aghast, the keys forgotten in her hand.

Mulder snatched the keys from her and unlocked the door. "I'll reimburse you, Scully," he said, entering the office and settling down at his desk.

Scully watched him for a moment. "Mulder?" she finally prompted.

He had already opened a bag of sunflower seeds. "What?" he mumbled around a mouthful.

"You're just going to... sit there?"

"As opposed to...?" Mulder returned. "If you haven't noticed, I'm not so good at the walking thing, Scully. I figured sitting was more┘"

"What about fixing this?" Scully demanded in a near shout.

Mulder balked. "I don't know how to fix it," he said somewhat meekly.

"Don't you have a theory or something?" Scully's volume was increasing to dangerous levels. Mulder feared that his vocal cords, so long accustomed to his habitual monotone, might crack from the strain.

"I always have theories, Scully," he said somewhat testily, though his attention was diverted by his skirt. It appeared that the garment had magically twisted itself about his hips such that the slit which had originally been in the back (though he had actually put it in the front at first before Scully had angrily straightened him out and told him in clear terms not to be stupid... he had actually enjoyed the slit immensely in the front... no doubt the bullpen would have similarly appreciated it) was now splayed wide over his thigh. As much as he enjoyed the sight, he struggled to fix it, mindful of Scully's wrathful glare.  
"But you're the one" tug "who always" tug, squirm, tug "shoots my theories down!" He finally gave up on trying to fix the damn skirt in the chair and stood up, hiking up his skirt and attempting to fix it, obviously unaware that Scully got a full view of his rather lacy black panties.

"For godsakes!" Scully roared in horror, lunging over the desk toward him to right the damage.

From the doorway - the open doorway, Scully noted in dismay - a throat was cleared delicately.

Scully turned her head slightly, aware that not only was the six-plus feet of her body splayed across the desk but that one hand was on Mulder's waist and the other had somehow ended up under his skirt. Mulder was standing up, his legs somewhat indecently spread, and the hem of his skirt around his waist.

The visitor was an office courier, a look of abject horror on her face as she clutched an interdepartmental package to her breast and beheld the incriminating scene before her.

"I'll just leave the package on the..." Her eyes darted nervously toward the desk, its supplies having been scattered haphazardly across its surface during Scully's lunge. "The um... floor! The floor. I'll leave the package for you on the whore... I mean floor!" She dropped the package and fled, slamming the door behind her.

"What the hell does she mean, whore?" Mulder demanded, insulted, skirt hiked up above his spread legs.

"I can't deal with this," Scully muttered, dropping her head to the desk and not bothering to move from her sprawled out position.

"You were the one with your hands up my skirt," offered Mulder.

Scully didn't even raise her head from the desk. "Go get coffee, Mulder... just go get some coffee. You can't mess that up, right?"

"I never mess things up, Scully," Mulder said, a little hurt, as he righted his clothing.

"I need some coffee," Scully mumbled. "And don't forget Sweet 'n' Low."

"Maybe you could straighten up the desk while I'm gone," suggested Mulder as he bounced out the door.

Scully didn't move for a long moment. The pain of the edge of the desk digging into her thigh was almost... therapeutic. Maybe if she stayed there long enough, Mulder would have a fat bruise there when they regained their rightful bodies.

If they did.

Oh God...

Without moving her head, Scully floundered with her left hand around the desktop, feeling for the phone. When she finally located it, she halfheartedly punched in a memorized number, hoping she was hitting the right buttons but not really caring if she wasn't, and fumbled the receiver up to her ear.

"Lone Gunmen."

"Turn off the tape and tell me what you know," ordered Scully.

"What?"

"I said to turn off the tape," she repeated.

"I can't hear a damn word you're saying, Mulder. Er... Scully?"

Oh. Shit. The receiver was upside down. For godsakes.

"Is this better?" Scully mumbled. Since her head was resting on her right ear, she balanced the receiver on her left ear and dangled it over her face in the general direction of her mouth.

"Yeah, yeah," said Frohike.

"Information, Frohike, I need information."

Frohike paused. "Ehhh... Information on what?"

"What the hell do you mean on what?" Scully roared into the receiver... which promptly sent the hapless phone flying from its precarious position on her head to the floor with a loud clatter. "Son of a bitch," she muttered, pulling the phone back up by the cord.

"┘can't reach our informant."

"So... what?" Dread settled into the pit of Scully's stomach.

Frohike paused. "It means that our resources have dried up, Scully. We have nothing to offer you guys. We're... we're sorry."

Scully absorbed that for a moment, trying desperately not to lose her cool. "I... I make a horrible man, Frohike," she confessed finally in a near whisper.

"Maybe you're just used to having been an extraordinary woman," offered Frohike in all seriousness.

Had the situation been different, Scully would surely have noted the sweet, frank simplicity in the Gunman's voice. As it was, she completely ignored it. "Frohike... I... I walk like a girl."

"Scully┘"

"I - I can't put my erection underneath my waistband without everyone knowing what I'm doing."

"Look, Scully┘"

"I... I peed with my pants down."

Pause.

"Frohike, I'm... I'm just no good at this. How am I going to spend the rest of my life ?"

"Wait, Scully... Did you say that you peed with your pants down? Like all the way down?"

"What?"

"Like around your ankles?"

Click

Scully softly thudded her head against the desktop. It was sort of relaxing in a strange, masochistic kind of way.

Thud, thud

She was going to spend the rest of her life as Spooky Mulder.

┘ thud┘

Spooky Mulder... the undeniable king of the paranormal, paranoia, and porn.

┘ thud┘

She was going to have to learn proper urinal etiquette...

┘ thud┘

How to belch the "Star-Spangled Banner"...

┘ thud┘

How to (gulp) masturbate...

"Fox? Are you okay?"

How to... oh Jesus, how to be a straight man.

┘ CRASH! ┘

"Fox!"

Scully jumped to her feet, brushing off the various bits of debris which her suit had acquired during her somewhat undignified fall from the desktop to the floor. And then her eyes fell on... her.

"Agent Fowley," she gasped.

The dark-haired woman smiled faintly, an eyebrow quirked. "Why the uncharacteristic formality, Agent Mulder?" She took a step towards Scully.

Scully backed up a step, bumping into the desk and barely resisting the urge to clamber atop it just to get farther away. "I, uh... What - what can I do for you, um, Diana?" she stammered.

"Let's play a hypothetical game, Fox."

"Um, well, I was just about to┘" Scully began, but Fowley overrode her quickly and efficiently.

"Suppose, hypothetically, a woman asks her old friend and partner to come to her place for dinner. Say, hypothetically, she makes chicken cordon bleu which she knows happens to be her old friend's favorite dish."

Chicken cordon bleu... Mulder's favorite food is chicken cordon bleu. Why the hell didn't Scully know that? Well, because all they ever are together was fast food, so really, she had no way of knowing that and she doubted that Fowley knew that Mulder dreamed about quarter pounders with salsa... wait, what the hell? Mulder was going over to Diana Fowley's house for dinner?

Fowley sat down in a nearby chair and folded her hands neatly in her lap. No doubt a trick designed to give the appearance of nonchalance that she had learned from Mulder. "And suppose, just for the sake of argument Fox, that the old friend never shows up. This hypothetical individual has a history of various ditches, quite a few of which are emotional rather than professional, so the woman of course can see what has happened. Meanwhile, her hypothetical refrigerator was filled with hypothetical chicken cordon bleu for an entire hypothetical week (until she finally took the remnants to a hypothetical homeless shelter), as she waited to see if her old friend would have the decency to call her and explain." She looked at Scully significantly.

Mulder stood her up... Mulder stood her up... Mulder stood her up...

Scully forced her mind from that moot point. The homeless shelters in the area generally accepted non-canned foods only on weekends... and if the chicken had resided in Fowley's freezer for a week, then... uh... so Mulder had made dinner plans with Diana Fowley for the weekend before last. And he had stood her up.

Mulder stood her up...

If Scully could remember correctly, she had gone shopping for a new living room set on Saturday and had dragged a somewhat bored but in no way reluctant Mulder along with her in the hopes that he would help her carry and situate her purchases. He had, not surprisingly, been little help in finding an aesthetic couch; he was unforgivably attached to leather upholstery. But he had been with her all day and he had crashed on the new sofa (and she had bought a sofa-bed just for that purpose, though Mulder hadn't even bothered to open it up before going to sleep) that night, instead of driving back to his place.

On Sunday, he had helped her arrange her new furniture and dispose of the old set, after which he had crashed once more on the new sofa (which he had by then opened up to the bed... only Mulder would be so odd), this time armed with both a remote control and a "Planet of the Apes" marathon. In the middle of Charlton Heston's grappling with the damn, filthy apes, Scully had asked him if he had had any plans and he had given pause for a moment, but then had readily replied that since Nova was a babe - a silent babe who didn't constantly beleaguer Taylor with scientific discourse as to the extraordinary unlikelihood of man being replaced by apes and such - and that Cornelius wasn't so bad himself, the apes certainly had priority over anything else planned. He had then changed the subject quickly with a suggestion of popcorn.

Mulder stood Fowley up... to watch "Planet of the Apes" with Scully...

Scully envisioned all the wonderful things she could tell Fowley, all the wonderfully catty conversations they could have with the other woman thinking all the while that she was talking to Mulder:

⌠Well, to be honest, Diana, I spent an impromptu weekend with Scully and I didn't feel like ruining it by going over to your house.■ Ooo, that was good... she'd have to remember that one.

Or... ⌠Well, Diana, I was over at Scully's house for the whole weekend.■ Suspiciously: ⌠The whole weekend?■ Smirk: ⌠The WHOLE weekend.■ ⌠Why didn't you call, Fox?■ ⌠I just didn't have the energy to get out of her new sofa-bed and go to the phone. You see, my cell phone had been discarded with my jacket...■

Or even: ⌠Well, you see, Diana, when I accepted your invitation, I was a shattered man, a lone and broken man who wholly believe that his delusions of the paranormal had vastly affected his ability to maintain healthy, long-term relationships. This was, incidentally, the condition in which you left me following your departure from the X-Files and your recruitment by the so- called Black-Lunged Son of a Bitch. But I digress. I spent the weekend with Scully, doing normal things like picking out furniture and envisioning her naked body splayed out upon the various cushions as I normally do (well, without the cushions part... sometimes it's a desk, sometimes it's the backseat of a Taurus, sometimes it's even a Delta Airlines flotation device, depending on how short her skirt is and how long it's been since I last had a nice, long, healthy fantasy about her) and I realized that I am not only perfectly capable of maintaining healthy long- term relationships, but that I have cultivated the single most significant relationship of my life with Scully and that it has weathered mutants, global conspiracies, and even your hairdo.■

Okay, that last one was a little much. Except the part about the hairdo. And maybe if God was smiling down at her, the flotation device wasn't too far off either.

But in the meantime, what delectably evil thing to tell Diana?

"Fox?"

Scully shook herself and opened her mouth to zing her, her, Diana Fowley. Finally. The wholly undeserving woman who had not only undermined Mulder's trust in Scully, but had done so without meriting his trust herself.

And then just as the words were about the come out of her mouth, Fowley stepped forward, genuine concern on her face. "Fox, are you okay?" she asked.

And Scully deflated. Completely.

She could justify deliberate cruelty to Fowley to herself... she could certainly swing the Gunmen to believe her justifications as they had believed her when she questioned the woman's loyalties. But Mulder would never forgive her.

And besides, she knew that Mulder had stood up a near-gourmet dinner at Diana Fowley's house just to spend a normal evening with her watching cult flicks. So there.

She sighed. "I'm fine, Diana," she said. "Look, I'm really sorry about dinner. I won't give you any excuses."

Fowley looked at her askance. "No excuses?"

Scully backpedaled fast. "Do I normally give you excuses?" she asked quickly, adding hastily, "Well, you see, I was out jogging and I totally lost track of┘"

"It's okay," said Fowley with a tolerant smile, putting a finger on Scully's lips to shush her.

Uh oh, thought Scully, resisting the urge to dive under the desk. As a woman, she knew what was going to happen next: the post-finger-on-the-lips kiss. The only unclear thing was what she should do to tactfully break the moment before Fowley got too close and Scully gave in to the urge to vomit. Not that it would be such a bad idea to vomit directly into Fowley's mouth, thought Scully evilly...

But she had Mulder to think about.

She grabbed Fowley's shoulders, moved her to a respectful distance, leaned back against the desk and asked conversationally, "Have you seen Scully?"

Fowley blanched, staring at Scully as if she had sprouted another head. "What┘?" Then she apparently thought better of it and shook her head. "Last I saw, she was in the coffee room." She turned to leave, then added, "Has she been feeling all right?"

Oh, shit. "What? What is she... doing?"

Fowley shrugged. "It looked like she having uncharacteristic amounts of 'fun' with a few bullpen agents."

"Fun?" roared Scully.

Fowley flinched.

"Goddammit all the hell, I leave him alone for five minutes with a simple request for coffee and he has to go and single-handedly destroy whatever nuances of professionalism I maintained after that pantyhose incident with Skinner," Scully babbled to herself under her breath, haphazardly sifting through the contents of the desk trying to find the office keys.

"Uhhh... Fox?"

Scully didn't even bother responding. She slammed the office door shut, locked it with a flick of her wrist, and stalked down the corridor to the elevator in hopes of preventing disaster.

Diana watched with an open mouth. Was it her imagination, or was Mulder getting weirder?

She flipped open her cell phone and dialed a memorized number. "Sir? You asked me to find out if something is more odd than usual about Agents Mulder and Scully? You won't believe this..." 


	11. Chapter 11

"Okay, and then the pathologist says, 'Well, then how do you explain the complete exsanguination of the cow?' And then the sheriff says, 'That's no cow, that's my wife!'"

Scully had rounded the corner in time to hear the pathetic punch line, but had been unprepared to deal with the raucous laughter that followed it. Certainly the intelligent, capable agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation weren't foolish enough to find such an asinine joke funny?

And yet there they were, about fifteen of them in all, all crammed into a coffee room unprepared to deal with such an onslaught and all laughing uproariously at an un-funny joke. Not just mirth, but knee-slapping, coffee-sloshing hilarity.

And the deliverer of the punch line was seated atop the coffee counter, legs crossed primly at the ankle (thank God for small favors), having just sloshed his coffee all over his already abused skirt in the process of slapping his knee. And somehow, he had yet again managed to misplace his shoes and was waving his bare legs around - as well as his bare feet, for godsakes, the nails of which boasted rather hefty coatings of Revlon Cappuccino... a color that Scully well knew was unsuited for her fair complexion and red hair, but which she had never bothered to remove since she had never made a habit of traipsing around the coffee room with bullpen agents ogling at her unshod feet.

She probably should have realized that working with Fox Mulder would have inevitably led to a body-switching episode and should have taken the appropriate precautions.

"So who's heard the one about the proctologist and the Reticulan?" Mulder asked his audience loudly.

Scully opened her mouth to call out to him - he had obviously not noticed her in the back of the room or else he would certainly have realized her displeasure at his unprofessional actions - but then she snapped it shut. If she publicly accused Mulder of unprofessionalism or showed outwardly in any way that she was upset with him, the bullpen agents would see Spooky Mulder berating his Ice Queen partner. After all the jokes and the very relaxed atmosphere Mulder had cultivated in Scully's body, the agents might assume that perhaps the Ice Queen nickname was a little extreme if not wholly undeserved... and if they began to think that, then they might put that together with Spooky's displayed displeasure, and assume that Spooky kept Icy locked up in the basement to hunt aliens with him, rather than the two being a unified and mutually-respectful unit.

She rubbed her forehead. She was having a personality crisis and it was all Mulder's fault. Except that she was Mulder. She stifled a groan.

If only Mulder could be as considerate with her body as she was trying to be with his. She'd behaved in the presence of the Foul One... she'd almost let her kiss her, for godsakes. And now she was going to let Mulder rip her professional reputation to threads in order that his might not be further damaged.

She was going to kill him.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

With spoons.

Dull spoons.

"Hey, Scully, could you toss me a packet of sugar?" Scully called out over the hubbub.  
The din decreased as the other agents noticed Spooky.

Mulder blanched guiltily, but obediently tossed her a white packet, shooting her a confused look along with it.

"Thanks, Scully," said Scully with a cheerful wave. "See you when you're done here." She jabbed an unfamiliar guy in the ribs and said, "Have her tell you the one about the rabbi and the uncircumcised necrophiliac. Classic, and her delivery is great!" And she turned around and left. 


	12. Chapter 12

"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit."

Special Agent Gordon Biersch exhaled the expletive slowly, under his breath, as he watched Dana Scully's retreating form - and ohhhhhhhhhh, what a nice form it was... and Jesus, were his pants tight or what? - as she disappeared into a basement-bound elevator to chase after her nutball partner who had left a while earlier. Damn, was she sexy. He'd caught a glimpse of some rather enticingly lacy black panties as she had clambered up on top of the counter... If only his wife had the body to wear something like that...

Yeah, he was married, but honestly, what was the problem with some healthy fantasies? It wasn't as if he was scouring the market for another wife... god only knew he had more than enough of those. She shouldn't go into those jealous fits, really, because he certainly wasn't trying to replace her... how many fat, ugly, bitching cows did one man need after all? No, he was in the market for a nice, beautiful, intelligent young woman with whom he could share a meaningful emotional relationship without having to listen to her bitch about his clothes, his work, his salary, his strippers, his kids, his mother, his prostitutes, his haircut, his table manners, his escort service, his sexual performance, his 40DD secretary (and who could legitimately bitch about Elektra anyway? she didn't type very fast, or very accurately now that he thought about it, but she had an incredible rack and boy did that girl know how to use it), his alcoholism, his brief jail stint (he was acquitted, after all), or any of his more vile habits.

He had actually been planning his move on Dana Scully for quite some time. Short of bashing her partner's skull in with a cow prod and posing as his neurosurgeon, he hadn't quite figured out how to start a conversation with her. He had had a prime opportunity to make his move when she was assigned an autopsy of a murder victim from one of his cases, but he had been in extreme danger of losing his rather large lunch before she had even finished the Y incision and had had to make his escape before humiliating himself. He had waited hours for her a discreet distance from the morgue so as not to breathe in the rather ripe aromas, planning how he would turn a professional discussion into an invitation to dinner and ultimately to a tryst in the hotel room he had procured just for such an occasion... but the moment she had emerged with file folder in hand, he smelled Eau d'Corpse all over her and had been forced to bolt. He had never apologized to her either... by the time he was in control of himself, she had given her findings to his partner and had gone home.

Not that it mattered now. From what he'd just witnessed, Dana Scully had just been laid. And it hadn't been by him.

Well, to be honest, he couldn't remember anything from last night except cheap beer, cheap perfume, a mind-shattering orgasm and post-coital bliss (or an alcohol-induced impotence followed by the hooker calling him half a man and then slugging him with her purse... he couldn't remember which), and his wife slamming the bedroom door in his face, so it was entirely possible that he had banged the Ice Queen and simply didn't remember it. Which was a shame because he would have loved to tell his partner that he won the bet.

"So who the hell melted Doc Ice?" Biersch asked loudly to the agents milling around him.

"It wasn't me," said young Agent Weinhard a little too forlornly for Biersch's taste.

Biersch snorted. "Buck up, Henry," he told him, "at least you got that glimpse up her skirt." It's the most action you're going to see for years, you prepubescent little prick.

"Victoria's Secret, La Femme Victoria model, a bra and panties set with matching garters," offered Adams helpfully.

Every man in the room was too preoccupied with visions of Dana Scully in her La Femme Victoria ensemble, augmented with both six-inch Stilettos and a leather gun holster slung around her hips (and, in Biersch's case, matching furred handcuffs and a chihuahua) to wonder why or how seventy-year-old retiree Samuel Adams knew that much about lingerie.

"Spooky's a lucky man."

The observation brought an abrupt and rather unpleasant end to the rampant fantasies escalating through the room.

Biersch whirled around. "Who said that?" he demanded.

Agent O'Doul balked. "Hey, take it easy, Gordo," he said, eyeing Biersch suspiciously.

"Why Spooky?"

"Pretty obvious there, Gordo," O'Doul said, shrugging. "Ice comes in sporting some serious post-coital auras and Spooky's wearing a new G-string of self-confidence. Too much of a coincidence to think they both just happened to get laid for the first time in five years on the same night with other people." He grinned suddenly. "And besides, my girlfriend Pauli just delivered a package down there and caught them in The Act."

Weinhard looked crushed. "The Act?" he repeated, crestfallen.

"Wait, you're dating that Pauli girl?" spoke up Weinhard's partner, Foster, in his ever- annoying Australian accent. Biersch fought the urge to punch him. Foster: Australian for Asshole. "She's hot!"

"Not as hot as Dana," lamented Weinhard to himself.

Biersch sighed to himself and shoved his way out of the still-packed coffee room. So much for playing with Ice. Of all the women at Headquarters, he had singled her out as the most beautiful, most professional, most intelligent, and thus, the best suited for him. Someone like Gordon Biersch could never settle for less than the best. If it could not be Dana Scully, well then...

And then he caught side of Pauli the office courier bending over to pick up a fallen package. Damn, was she sexy. If only his wife's ass could look like that...

He glanced over his shoulder to make sure O'Doul was still occupied in the coffee room and then sprinted towards the courier, calling, "Hey, Pauli girl, that's a nice package you have there..." 


	13. Chapter 13

Mulder barely made it into the car as Scully peeled out of the parking garage with a screech. "Jesus, Scully!" he panted, slamming the door and frantically trying to buckle his seatbelt before the near miss at the last turn became a direct hit at the next. "Where the hell are we going and why are we going there so fast?"

Scully's eyes were fixed on the course of her slalom-driving and she didn't answer. She did gesture for Mulder to pour them both some coffee from a Thermos, but she didn't touch hers, her hands too busy gripping the steering wheel with a white-knuckled death grip. Mulder, on the other hand, winded from having sprinted after her, guzzled his down as he wondered how he was going to find the right words to apologize for his behavior while at the same time bring up the fact that Scully could easily get a date with any man in Headquarters if she tried...

"I wouldn't expect you to believe this," Scully finally said as the buildings melted into open land, "but Diana Fowley visited me before I found you in the coffee room and by the time I was back, there was a message from the Smoking Man to get back to ground zero for this body- switching thing. That's more than a coincidence."

Mulder had trouble following the conversation, distracted by a huge yawn. He had thought Scully was pissed at him for the coffee room stint and was trying to drive off...?

"Diana? The Smoking Man?" he repeated uncomprehendingly. Yawning, he resituated himself in the car seat, feeling the fatigue of the last day and a half catching up with him.

Scully heaved a theatrical sigh. "They know what happened to us, Mulder, and while I know you would like to think they acquired the knowledge through the bugs, I think it's fairly obvious that Diana Fowley┘"

"Wait, Smoking Man knows what happened?" Mulder interrupted. His eyes were bright as he processed this information. "If he knows what happened, Scully, and if he knows how to fix it, then he must be behind it." Then he paused. "But why tell us how to fix it? Obviously we're not much of a threat to him like this..." He stopped and slumped back against the seat, a look of consternation on his face. He yawned.

Scully's brow furrowed.

Mulder caught it. "What?" he asked suspiciously, his voice quiet.

She shook her head, keeping her eyes fastidiously trained on the road.

"Scully," said Mulder warningly.

Silence.

"The chip, Mulder," said Scully finally, not looking away from the road ahead of her. "He doesn't want you to be in the body with the chip in it." Having said that, she hurried to add more, to prevent him from speaking. "It makes perfect sense, of course. If I'm the one with the chip, he can control you without actually compromising you... he, of course, loses that control if you are the one with the chip... and we both know perfectly well that you are being kept alive for a reason and it would be pointless to expose you to the risks of cancer and abduction through the chip when they have gone through such elaborate measures to keep you alive thus far..." Her voice trailed off.

Mulder stared at her.

"I... I don't exactly relish being their tool against you, Mulder, but the fact is that if anyone has the ability to bring them down, it's you. If you did succumb to cancer or if you were abducted by mistake, I simply don't have the resources to go on in your place."

"Don't hide behind logic here, Scully," said Mulder tightly, fists clenched, voice controlled and even but only barely so. "You're playing martyr. If we were to stay as we are, they wouldn't have the balls to dispose of me the same way they would so frivolously dispose of you to get me to play the Syndicate's whore. You would be safe and I would have at least a marginal balance of power with the Smoking Man. He would have no control over me except that of my own life and he already has that. What he wouldn't have if we stayed like this, Scully, is you."

Scully shook her head, stubbornly refusing to meet his gaze.

"Dammit, Scully, listen to me!" yelled Mulder in frustration. "I know you had a better life as Dana Scully, but that life was at the mercy of the Syndicate and of the tiny piece of metal at the base of her neck. In my body, you're safe. And with me in your body, I'm calling their bluff and they can't risk showing me their cards." He paused. "This isn't the time to play your goddamned game of self-sacrifice."

Scully spoke softly, almost inaudibly. "If now is not the time, Mulder, I can't think of a better one." Her next words were a little louder. "The Truth is more important, Mulder. You and you alone are equipped to expose it, I am not. Being in my body is too risky and the Truth is not something I'm prepared to risk."

Silence.

"I won't let you do it, Scully. If I have to shoot you in the shoulder, I'm not going to let you do this."

A faint smile tugged at Scully's lips. "The way you were shooting yesterday, I would suggest you not try that kind of precision shooting."

Mulder ignored her sad attempt at humor. "I won't let you do it," he repeated.

She sighed softly, then finally looked away from the road to meet his eyes... and then she slowly moved her gaze to the empty coffee cup he held in his lap. And then she looked back at the road.

It took Mulder less than a second to realize what she had done. "You drugged the coffee," he said quietly. It wasn't a question.

Her silence was confirmation of the chilling knowledge. "Scully," he breathed, staring at her as if by sheer force of will he could make her understand.

And as his eyes drooped and eventually fluttered shut, he saw only her impassive profile as she drove determinedly forward. 


	14. Chapter 14

He awoke with a throbbing headache. His entire head pounded to the loud and rather obnoxious beating of his heart. He opened his eyes cautiously, felt the bright sunlight assail his brain with unneeded stimuli, and then closed them mercifully once more, careful to balance his head on the steering wheel. The last thing his head needed was more abuse.

Wait.

Had he been driving?

His eyes snapped open and he flew upright in the seat. A kaleidoscope of colors exploded in his vision and he groaned.

When his vision cleared, he dropped his head into his palms and waited for the merciless pounding to stop. It didn't, and he stopped hoping.

At least the car didn't appear to be damaged. His last memory was that of a blinding flash and the almost certain knowledge that they were headed for the tree... but the tree was a good five feet away. Close call. He was grateful; the last thing he needed to do was fill out yet another report to Skinner.

But when he looked over to Scully, he forgot about being grateful. He forgot how to breathe.

She was slumped over in the seat, a cascade of hair obscuring her face from his view... but thankfully, the strands in front of her mouth were moving with each of her long, steady, deep breaths. She was asleep... just asleep.

He checked her pulse just in case, but it was strong and regular.

He remembered how to breathe himself and set about getting them back to DC.

He hadn't so much as moved an inch in reverse when he realized that the odd angle of the car was not due to the terrain, but instead to a flat tire.

Son of a bitch.

This was turning into a really shitty day. 


	15. Chapter 15

By the time Mulder was outside Scully's apartment that evening, bearing a rather expensive red wine to compliment the cheering-up dinner she had promised him, his nerves were frazzled and he was about to commit himself to an institution for suffering from higher levels of insanity than normal. He had dozed off in a meeting and had dreamed of Frohike hitting on him. He had gone to buy the wine for dinner and had had visions of wearing expensive lingerie. And, by far the worst moment, was when he had actually had to pause to decide which restroom to use.

He knew he was paranoid. He knew he believed in things most other people used as fodder for fairy tales. Hell, he was as addicted to porn as he was to sunflower seeds (the Freudian in him tried hard not to analyze that comparison too much). But for all his eccentricities, he had never before experienced gender association problems.

"Come on in!" bellowed Scully from within the bowels of her apartment.

Mulder let himself in, precariously balancing his cargo in one arm and unlocking and opening the door with the other. "Scully?" he inquired, looking around for his noticeably absent partner.

"Just looking at some stuff my mom must have left for me," Scully answered from her bedroom and she held up a suspiciously scanty set of lingerie from Victoria's Secret and wondered what the hell had gotten into her mother.

"I brought some wine and some ice cream," Mulder bellowed back.

Scully emerged from her bedroom and eyed the gifts. "Chunky Monkey, Mulder?" she said, raising an eyebrow as she took the pint from him and put it in her freezer.

"No, seriously, Scully, you won't believe it, but I actually had a huge craving for the stuff," admitted Mulder sheepishly.

Scully shrugged. "I'd believe it... for some reason, right after I woke up, I had an insatiable urge to cook chicken cordon bleu."

Mulder looked delighted. "Scully, that's my favorite dish!"

It was Scully's turn for delight. "Well, Mulder, I just so happen to cook the best chicken cordon bleu this side of France," she boasted.

"I believe it," said Mulder, inhaling deeply with a look of intense rapture on his face.

"You set the table, Mulder, and let me tell you about this incredible dream I had on the way home..." 


End file.
